In the weeks following the deadly serial bombings in Indian capital, New Delhi in October last year, the Union Home department in a revealing disclosure, informed a hitherto unknown Inquilabi militant outfit which shouldered the responsibility of Delhi blasts has been active in Southern parts of the country and associated with the outlawed 'Student Islamic Movement of India' (hereafter SIMI), the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit. Intelligence sources revealed that the masterminds behind the October blasts held several meetings with SIMI cadres in southern cities like Gulbarga and Hubli. Again this year, SIMI’s name cropped up, of course, for all the wrong reasons, as the crime branch suspected SIMI’s hand in the February 19 blast at Ahmedabad railway station in Gujarat.

Even after SIMI was outlawed immediately after the 9/11 events, its subversive activities continued relentlessly. In 2005, SIMI struck twice in a single month, creating panic within the Indian security establishment, which had become complacent about its downfall. On 5th July, suspected SIMI operatives carried out an attack on the disputed temple complex in Ayodhya. Later this month, on 28th July, SIMI again suspected an explosion on board the Shramjeevi train that killed 12 people and injured at least 52 other passengers. The train blast was identical to SIMI’s Sabarmati Express bomb blast in 2000 that killed at least 11 people. Also, in the Western port city of Mumbai, SIMI orchestrated several deadly bomb blasts in 2002 and 2003.  However, SIMI cadres received a moral boost when eight of the main accused, all SIMI functionaries, were acquitted by an Anti-Terrorism Court for lack of evidence in June 2005 in one of the Mumbai blasts.

In its nearly three decades of existence, the outfit has tried to revive Islam in India in a coordinated manner with an overall objective to Islamise the whole country and has been involved in spreading ‘communal poison’ among Muslim youths and has been instrumental in numerous communal riots and subversive acts across the country. Tagged as the ‘fifth column’ of Pakistan’s intelligence agency due to its anti-India activities, the outfit has been active and operational in many parts of India since its inception in 1977. Being a conglomerate of a number of students and youth Islamic bodies like Muslim Students Association, Students Islamic Union, Students Islamic Organization, Muslim Youth Association, SIMI, became a platform for fanatical Muslim students, who were opposed to the concept of nationalism, secularism, and democracy. Its pro-Taliban stance in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, anti-US demonstrations in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, and lionization of Osama bin Laden as the ‘ultimate Jehadi’ drew worldwide attention and prompted the Indian government to impose a ban. In the face of SIMI’s stated goal to convert India into an Islamic country, Hindu right-wing bodies raised their voice and urged the international community to take note of the mushrooming growth of ‘mini Talibans’ all over India and elsewhere. Since the ban, some reports suggest that SIMI has been operating under the banner of Tahreek Ihya-e-Ummat (TAU).

SIMI was founded on 25 April 1977 at the University of Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, as a radical student outfit, and the interlinked triad of Islamic concepts—Ummah, Khilafat and Jehad —determined SIMI’s postures and activities in the country thereafter. It started as a united platform for Muslim students and youth in the country, with the objective to restore the Caliphate for the unity of Ummah (Muslim community) by rejecting the concept of nationalism, secularism, and democracy. Its aim was to establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam), by using a violent path, if necessary, to convert non-Muslims. The ideological inspirations were derived from Muslim thinkers who had launched Islamic movements in the subcontinent in the past, e.g., Shah Walliullah, Sayyid Ahmad, Haji Shariat Allah, and Maulana Maududi, the founder of the Jama’at-i Islami (JEI). SIMI was deeply inspired by Maududi’s goal to make Islam the supreme organizing principle for the social and political life of the Muslim community as a whole within the ‘iqamat-i-deen’ and ‘hukumat-i ilahiya’ concepts. In its annual report, SIMI reiterated these tenets, urging Muslim youth to strive for the revival of Islam in light of the Quran and Sunnah. In fact, the influence was so deep-rooted that the first decade of SIMI’s existence witnessed clear domination by Jamaat leadership, with senior members of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JeIH), the Indian wing of JEI.

The founding president of the outfit, Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, is currently based in the US. Although he denounced the radicalization of SIMI, he claimed that the SIMI he founded emerged as part of a larger goal to educate and enlighten the Muslim community in India. As a matter of fact, it has been Maududi’s teachings and radical writings on Islam and the Islamic revolution that have provided SIMI with the impetus to continue its struggle toward its goal of establishing the rule of the Khalifa, where every Muslim could lead an Islamic way of life. According to it, a true Muslim can not lead their life in accordance with Islam in a pluralist, secular society which is un-Islamic. Thus, an organized struggle to establish the Islamic state is largely imperative and a duty for each Muslim. It also believed in the Jihad and was ready to wage it against non-believers and whoever put hurdles in the path of the struggle for establishing the khilafah. Gradually, SIMI’s adoption and vigorous persuasion of four elements of Islam: Quran, Jihad and Shahadat (Martyrdom) as constitution, path and desire, respectively, branded it as a radical and violent outfit.

While there is scant data regarding its overall strength in terms of membership and structures, the leadership is in complete disarray following the 2001 ban. The last known leaders of the outfit were Shahid Badar Falah, the national president, and Safdar Nagori, the secretary-general, respectively. While the president was arrested and charged with sedition and communal tension in north India in September 2001, the general secretary, Nagori, has been absconding and evading arrest ever since. It has been reported that Nagori is trying to revive SIMI and has already established links with the operatives of the Pakistan intelligence agency, Hamas, and other like-minded leaders across India’s national border. The ideological links with Hamas was revealed by SIMI’s financial secretary Salim Sajid following his arrest in June 2002. According to him, Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmad Yaseen had endorsed the ‘freedom struggle’ in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state and the reconstruction of the demolished Babri Masjid in UP. His interrogation also brought SIMI’s covert connections with Saudi Arabia’s Jamayyatul Ansar (JA) and Bangladesh’s Islamic Chhatra Shivir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. JA, comprised of SIMI activists, primarily expatriate Indian Muslims, operates in Saudi Arabia. Besides ideological support, financial aid was pouring from these sources. The outfit has always kept ties floating with the Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) units in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Among other sources of funding, the role of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Riyadh and the International Islamic Federation of Students' Organizations, based in Kuwait, is well established. Even the US-based Consultative Committee of Indian Muslims is reported to have supported SIMI.

Intelligence sources have stated that after the proscription, large numbers of SIMI cadres have fled to the northeastern part of India and neighboring Bangladesh for subversive training across the border and also for forging ties with other Islamic groups in the region. Much before that, SIMI had formed local branches in West Bengal, especially in the border districts of Malda, Murshidabad, and North and South Dinajpur, and even reached Kolkata. They organized regional meetings in West Bengal and in Chittagong of Bangladesh under different banners in 2003, where they had reportedly stressed on a plan to infiltrate Islamic education centers, libraries, and other cultural bodies for covert mobilization of Islamic forces. Widely dispersed tentacles of SIMI were not restricted to the Indian subcontinent. In 2003, as many as 350 Indian Muslims working in Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and other Middle Eastern states were recruited by SIMI to fight US forces in Iraq at the behest of the International Islamic Front.

Evidence galore regarding its ties with Pakistan’s ISI. Cadres of the outfit were being trained clandestinely by the ISI operatives with the aim of launching subversive strikes in the country and to balkanise India by carrying out large scale terrorist strikes.Many have confessed during their interrogations in the past. One arrested Sikh militant revealed in 1993 that many SIMI cadres, along with Kashmiri and Sikh militants, had been brought together by the ISI through the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan to carry out training and subversive activities in the Indian mainland. Although SIMI has denied the charge time and again evidences suggested that it has been in league with the ISI. Reports in the media indicated that ISI has been using various fraternal bodies associated with SIMI as conduits for sending funds, advice and instruction. It has also used Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries maintaining contacts with SIMI activists during their regular visits either for collection of funds or for Haj. In early 2003, senior police official in Lucknow who investigated SIMI case in the state, warned about later’s revival plan with the help of ISI. His reaction was based on the confessions made by the arrested SIMI operatives, Obaid Ullah and Mohammed Arif. Presently it is suspected that cadres of SIMI must have infiltrated other like minded outfits at the behest of ISI.

Besides, terrorist outfits like Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and Pakistan-based outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed were very much in radar of SIMI, for operational and logistic support.

The major concern before the Indian government and the United States that what if Al Qaeda infiltrates into SIMI? Now outlawed, but SIMI has been making every attempt to revive Islamic militancy within the country. This fear  of the involvement of SIMI activists in expanding Al-Qaeda’s network in India has been gripping Indian security establishment since its proscription in 2001. Its linkages with International terrorist outfits such as Al Qaeda and affiliation to Osama bin Laden have been debated when in October 2001, Safdar Nagori stated in Lucknow that declaring bin Laden as international terrorist was part of “an evil design of the US.” He later admitted to have distributed audio cassettes of bin Laden’s speeches in and around Kanpur city. At that time Indian officials indicated that extremist religious organisations were organising memberships for the Al-Qaeda and collecting funds on its behalf in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Gujarat, and Delhi. This was not a single instance of SIMI’s America bashing. Earlier, in July 1998 SIMI cadres held demonstration in major cities of India against the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the ‘Holy Land of Hijaz’ for all Islam followers, and for SIMI, it was a ‘sinister plot on the part of the enemies of Islam to desecrate and capture its holiest site.’ During a special operation, security officials have recovered CDs, tapes, books, journals, posters of Bin Laden and documents urging all Muslims to take revenge the Babari Masjid demolition, to support the secession of Kashmir as well as the jihad of Bin Laden in West Bengal.

Indian Intelligence agencies have been apprehensive about SIMI’s design targeting US military assets if they were stationed in India for deployment during the War on Terror campaign in Afghanistan. Several interrogations of captured Pakistani terrorists in J& K revealed threats from Al-Qaeda cells operational in India and their links to SIMI and other extremist religious groups. in the aftermath of 9/11 events, The Union home ministry reportedly backed operations to destroy Al-Qaeda cells emerging in national capital Delhi along with the state of Punjab, Gujarat, and J& K. One suspected Al-Qaeda operative Mohammad Afroz who has convicted last year had revealed earlier before the Mumbai Police to have plotted 9/11 like Kamikaze attacks in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons and Parliament House in India and Rialto tower in Australia. Razak was recruited in 1994 and ideologically indoctrinated by SIMI. He had admitted in his court testimony that the outfit had sent him to Melbourne, Australia, to undergo pilot training between August 1997 and July 1998, with all expenses paid by SIMI.

With sporadic but lethal manifestations of Al Qaeda’s signature strikes, SIMI has been holding the security apparatus in a tizzy as it is believed that SIMI might raise its head after its so-called quiescence with helping hands from Al Qaeda. Fears notwithstanding, a renewed hunt for Al Qaeda cadres and other terrorist outfits has been initiated by American intelligence agencies in collusion with Indian agencies in the region ahead of US President George W Bush’s South Asia visit in March 2006. The aim is to foil any attempt by a terror group like Al Qaeda to infiltrate outlawed and sluggish Islamic outfits like SIMI. The fear is that Al Qaeda could infiltrate these outfits to launch attacks inside and outside India against both Indian and US interests. However, while both the New Delhi and Washington administrations have no doubts over such infiltrations, recent bombings in the capital convinced the authorities of both countries that ‘The Base’ has reached home.

NOTES

1. “SIMI hand suspected in train blast, ” The Hindu, 1 August 2005.
2. Indian government announced a ban on SIMI on 27 September 2001, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, for its anti-national and destabilizing activities in India, for its controversial remarks questioning India’s sovereignty and integrity, and for its links with other Islamic militant outfits operating in the country and in Pakistan. Later, it was proscribed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002.
3. Harish Khare, “Hurling towards a civil war,” Seminar, No 509, 10 January 2002.
4. In December 2001, security forces arrested over a hundred Islamic activists allegedly belonging to SIMI operating under the banner of Tahreek Ihya-e-Ummat in the western city of Surat during an Islamic education conference. Police also seized TAU membership forms from the conference venue. See “SIMI activists arrested in Surat,” The Milli Gazette, Vol.3 (2) January 2002.
5. Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of A Divided Nation: India’s Muslims since Independence, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, p.208.
6. SIMI’s publication, “ The Saga of Struggle,” has been quoted in R.Upadhyay, “Students Islamic Movement of India,” Paper no. 825, South Asia Analysis Group, October 30, 2003.
7. Yoginder Sikand, “The Perils of Islamist Radicalism: The Students' Islamic Movement of India,” in Qalandar: Islam and Interfaith Relations in South Asia, February 2005.
8. Past records suggest that SIMI has some 400 full-time cadres called Ansars and some 20,000 ordinary members (Ikhwans). They have separate women's and children's groups too. The latter is called ‘Shaheen Force.’
9. Sajid has named a Jammu and Kashmir leader (Syed Ali Shah Geelani) who brought the Hamas top leadership close to the SIMI cadre. See,  “Hamas has endorsed jehad in J&K”, Time of India, June 29, 2002
10. “SIMI has extensive pan-Islamic links,” The Hindu, September 28, 2001.
11. “Bangladesh new haven for Islamic terrorists”, Daily Excelsior, December 12, 2003.
12. “SIMI cadres fighting US in Iraq,” Intelligence Online, August 28, 2003.
13. Arindam Banerjee, “The Threat in the North East”, Rediff.com, April 27, 2004.
14. “ISI links with Indian Islamic groups, ” Daily Excelsior, October 9, 2001.
15. Arif was a student of Unani Medicine at the College of Unani Medicine, Deoband, a major centre of Islamic learning located in Saharanpur district of UP and Obaid Ullah was pursuing MA in Arabic at the Lucknow University. See, “SIMI building base in UP again”, Press Trust of India, January 27, 2003.
16. SIMI in Laden soup, The Milli Gazette, Vol 2 (19), October 2001.
17. R.Upadhyay, “Students Islamic Movement of India,” op.cit.
18. The Statesman,  October 5, 2001.
19. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, Roli books, 2002, p. 205. The author cited Tactical interrogation Report of Afroz prepared by Intelligence Bureau (IB).

An abridged version has been published in Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Foundation) Volume IV, Issue 7, April 6, 2006. Read Complete Article (PDF),

• Tags:
• SIMI, Counterterrorism, India, Extremist Islam